B'way Update: Final Sondheim; Merrily Finds Theater; No More Room

Stephen Sondheim will have
 two productions on the boards
in 2023-24

There are ups and down on and Off-Broadway this week. The last Stephen Sondheim show is finally announcing dates and a theater as is the Broadway transfer of New York Theater Workshop's revival of Sondheim's Merrily We Roll Along. And one upcoming Broadway show has been forced to shut down before it even began performances. 

Here We Are, the last Stephen Sondheim musical will premiere at the Shed's Griffin Theater in September 2023. Casting and specifics dates will be announced at a later date. Based on two Luis Bunuel films, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and The Exterminating Angel, Here We Are features a book by David Ives (All in the Timing, Venus in Fur) and direction by Joe Mantello who won a Tony for his staging of Sondheim's Assassins. Not long before his death in 2021, Sondheim appeared on Stephen Colbert's late-night talk show and confirmed that the show, under the title of Square One, had a workshop with Nathan Lane and Bernadette Peters and would be coming to Broadway the following season. 

Another Sondheim show will also be coming to Broadway in 2023-24. The New York Theater Workshop revival of Merrily We Roll Along has been announced as beginning previews at the Hudson Theater on Sept. 19. (Opening to be announced.) Daniel Radcliffe, Jonathan Groff, Lindsay Mendez, Krystal Joy Brown, Katie Rose Clark, and Reg Rogers will repeat their performances from the NYTW production which was directed by Maria Friedman. Her staging was first seen at London's Menier Chocolate Factory and later transfered to the West End where it won the Olivier Award for Best Musical Revival. This will be the first Broadway revival of Merrily which originally closed after only 16 performances and ended the collaboration between Sondheim and Harold Prince. There have been Off-Broadway productions in 1994 (York Theater) and 2019 (Fiasco Theater at Roundabout's Laura Pels stage) as well as acclaimed concert versions. 

Lindsay Mendez, Jonathan Groff and
Daniel Radcliffe in
Merrily We Roll Along
Credit: Joan Marcus

2023 Oscars Films and Quick Predix

Everything Everywhere All at Once
will probably be the big winner
at tomorrow night's Oscars.
Credit: A24

I've been too busy to write anything in depth about the Oscars which are tomorrow night. But here are the Oscar nominated films I have seen so far. I might try to see one more tonight. Perhaps I'll do something radical and try to see all the nominated films AFTER the awards. The point is to enjoy great films. Guessing winners should be secondary. What's interesting is that award shows in general seem to be losing favor. The SAGs and the Independent Spirit Awards were both livestreamed on YouTube and not shown on any broadcast or cable network. As the Oscars lose ratings every year and become more and more out of touch with most moviegoers' sensibilities and lives, perhaps that is their ultimate destination. Another interesting note: I've only seen one of these nominated films in an actual theater. It's just so much easy to click your remote rather than getting in our car or bus, driving to the cinema, putting up with possible rude behavior, etc. Will movie theaters go the way of paper checks, books, LPs, magazines--charming remnants of a bygone, more personal, less digitized age?

Book Review: First Person Singular: Stories

Taken out of the Jackson Heights Library and read in a few days. I've read lots of Murakami and this eight-story collection was satisfying and bite-sized, yet so weird the stories linger long after you have finished them. As per the title all are in first person, some seem be spoken by the author himself. Most of the narrators are recalling enigmatic encounters in their past. There are ruminations on baseball and music (both jazz and classical), a meeting with a speaking monkey (who also appeared in Murakami's Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman) who steals people's names. A dream meeting with Charlie Parker. I think I liked With the Beatles best where a man recalls the impact of the Beatles on his generation, the strange older brother of his girlfriend, and Percy Faith's theme from A Summer Place playing in the background. The stories don't always make sense, and they don't have to. Murakami doesn't rely on conventional plot, but creates a feeling and evocations based on situations, objects, meetings, etc.

Book Review: Carrie and Me: A Mother-Daughter Love Story

Downloaded on my Kindle for about $10. A slim volume but obviously heartfelt. I finished it in a few hours. After viewing a YouTube clip from Carrie Hamilton's guest appearance with her mother on the short-lived Carol and Company, I was curious about this book. After beating a crushing drug habit in her teens, Carrie moved to a remote cabin in Colorado, toured as a musician and singer, and traveled to LA for acting gigs. She developed lung cancer and died at the tragically young age of 38. The first half of the book consists of Carol's reminiscences and email exchanges with her daughter as she takes a cross-country road trip to Memphis to visit Graceland while writing a story about a young woman making a similar journey. The second half of the book is that unfinished story, "Sunrise in Memphis." The story is sentimental and reads like a proposal for a TV-movie. The heroine Kate finds herself driving to Elvis' home in the company of a mysterious, super-polite cowboy. Along the way, they meet--briefly bump into would be more accurate--a covey of the usual colorful characters. There are flashbacks to the last night she can remember--clubbing with friends in Hollywood--and to a dream of a plane crash. After a few pages, you can guess where the plot is headed. Think "Highway to Heaven." It must have been painful for Burnett to work on this project, so I won't criticize any shortcomings. It's a sweet valentine to her departed child.

Book Review: The Critic's Daughter

Bought at Barnes and Noble: full price of $28. Priscilla Gilman's moving memoir of her relationship with her father, critic-essayist-teacher Richard Gilman, is incredibly detailed and specific in her memories of her dad's flaws and triumphs personally and professionally. The heart of the book is the bitter divorce between her parents, her dad the famously acerbic theater critic and her mom the powerful literary agent whose clients win Pulitzer Prizes and other awards like most people eat breakfast. Priscilla documents her painful role of acting as the "good, mature" daughter who holds it together while everyone else is falling apart. Richard Gilman emerges as a complicated, brilliant, but stubborn father and husband. What sticks with me are the little details--when he takes his daughters to lunches, the cash-strapped Gilman collects condiment packages. Here is a revered critic, feared by the likes of Tennessee Williams and David Merrick, hording ketchups and sugars. Gilman also recreates a world of literary New York that no longer exists. The internet has destroyed the traditional print media in which her father and mother thrived. She also gives us the harrowing final days of her dad's death by cancer as he is lovingly cared for by his third wife in Japan. A thorough, meticulous accounting of a daughter's love. We are friends with Priscilla's half-brother Nick and I feel I know him and his family better now.

Reconstructing the Carol Burnett Show: Part 37: Carol Channing, Ray Charles, Michael Jackson, and Others

Season Two
Sept. 30, 1968: Carol Channing

(Previously reviewed on Reconstructing the Carol Burnett Show, Part Ten: Carol and Carol Q&A, Bored Political Wife sketch, Golddigger sketch)

Carol and Carol

(ShoutFactoryTV.com) I found the complete version of this episode on ShoutFactoryTV's Original Masters series. Amazon was supposed to have it but the thumbnail promising the two Carols show led to an episode with Tim Conway from the first season that was already posted in the same series. Evidently someone at Amazon screwed up. So did someone at TV Guide which listed the original episode in 1968 as starring Mission: Impossible stars Martin Landau and Barbara Bain. (The husband and wife team never appeared on Carol's show, but there was a Mission: Impossible spoof a few seasons later.) 

Previously missing material includes Carol Channing recreating "Homesick Blues" from the Broadway production of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. The song about missing America while in Paris did not make the film version and neither did Carol, as she was replaced by Marilyn Monroe. Channing is delightful in her 1920s garb, warbling about Mutt and Jeff, Texas Guinan, and bathtub gin. 

There's also a Carol and Sis sketch, employing the overused plot point of a misunderstanding leading to an awkward martial situation. Husband Roger (Harvey) finds a wristwatch in the living room with the current date inscribed on it. He assumes it's an anniversary or birthday that he's forgotten and rushes to buy his wife Carol a pearl necklace. Turns out the watch was a present for another couple for whom Carol was holding onto, so she uses Harvey's forgetfulness to leverage the necklace into a matching set of earrings, because all women just care about jewelry, right?

B'way Update: Laurie Metcalf to Star in Grey House

Laurie Metcalf

Emmy and Tony winner Laurie Metcalf will reunite with Tony-winning director Joe Mantello for Grey House, a new play by Levi Holloway which will be the first production of the 2023-24 Broadway season. Described as a horror play, Grey House centers on a couple taking shelter during a snow storm at an isolated cabin inhabited by two teenage girls and a woman they claim is their mother. As the storm rages, the couple begins to question what's true and what those mysterious noises are coming from inside the walls. Previews begin April 29 before an opening on May 30 at the Lyceum Theater. Also starring are Emmy winner Tatiana Maslany (Orphan Black, She-Hulk, Attorney at Law), Emmy nominee and Drama Desk nominee Paul Sparks (House of Cards, At Home at the Zoo), Sophia Anna Caruso (Beetlejuice), and Millicent Simmonds (A Quiet Place).

Metcalf was directed by Mantello in Three Tall Women and Hillary and Clinton. They also worked together on a Broadway revival of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? which closed in previews in 2020 due to the COVID epidemic and never reopened. Metcalf previously appeared in another Broadway thriller, Misery. 

B'way Update: The Cottage, Jerry Mitchell Is Busy, Betty Boop, La La, etc.

Eric McCormack will return to Broadway 
this summer in The Cottage.

A new comedy entitled The Cottage will play the Hayes Theater on Broadway this summer. Inspired by the light comedies of Noel Coward, the play by Sandy Rustin will be directed by Tony winner Jason Alexander (Seinfeld, Jerome Robbins' Broadway) and star Emmy winner Eric McCormack (Will and Grace, The Music Man 2000 revival, Gore Vidal's The Best Man), and Tony nominees Laura Bell Bundy (Legally Blonde) and Lili Cooper (Tootsie, Spongebob Squarepants). Previews begin July 7 prior to a July 24 opening. Set in the English countryside in 1923, the plot concerns Sylvia Van Kipness who decides to reveal her love affair to her husband and her lover's wife. The play had a developmental workshop at Manhattan Theatre Club in 2017 and regional productions including The Barter Theater in Abington, Va., and Queens Theater in the Park.

Book Review: Olive, Again

Taken out of the Jackson Heights library. After reading Elizabeth Strout's Lucy by the Sea, where Olive is briefly mentioned as living in a retirement community, I took out Strout's sequel to her Pulitzer Prize-winning Olive Kitteridge and enjoyed it. The writing style is very different from the Lucy book which is almost Hemingway-esque in its spareness. The third-person narrative is from Olive's point of view, at least in the chapters where she is the main character. In several others, she appears only tangentially. The structure is a collection of interrelated short stories of the residents of the tiny coastal town of Crosby, Maine, some of them have been the protagonists of other Strout novels such as The Burgess Boys and Isabelle and Amy (perhaps I will get to those books later). Everyone in town has secrets and Strout unsparingly shares them and their keepers' humanity and vulnerability. A teenage girl has a bizarre but tender relationship with her teacher's husband. A warring elderly couple attempts to understand their daughter's work as a dominatrix. The brutally honest, undiplomatic Olive examines her life and attempts to mellow as she negotiates relationships with her second husband, her son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren, and finally with her fellow residents in the retirement complex. Strout expertly depicts the indignities of aging, including incontinence. All the everyday details are here, both unpleasant and endearing.

Disappearing Act

Observations of a vanishing culture:

The DVD section at the Union Square Barnes and Noble is now only a few shelves. It used to be a whole room.

When people go to the movie theaters, there are usually only a few attendees in the audience. At the last film I saw in a theater, Tar, we were among a handful in the seats. Cinema chains are shutting down including the Cinepolis on 23rd street and the Regal Union Square.

On the subway, I was the only one reading an actual book. Everyone else was staring into their phones.

No one sells photo albums anymore. No one writes checks. I can't listen to CDs in my car anymore because there is no CD player. I prefer CDs to streaming music because I have more control.

It happens to me every time. I want to sit down somewhere public to read while I kill time before an appointment, but I can never find a seat and I wind up wandering through the B&N or the Strand for hours.

When visiting my mother, I noticed that the Philadelphia Inquirer no longer runs a grid of TV listings. 

Reconstructing the Carol Burnett Show, Part 36: Carol and Company

Carol and Company: Carol surrounded by
regular cast members (l. to r.)
 Jeremy Piven, Anita Barone, 
Terry Kiser, Meagan Fay, and Richard Kind. 
Peter Krause later replaced Jeremy Piven.

After the original Carol Burnett Show (CBS) and the four-episode Carol Burnett and Company (ABC), Carol next returned to series TV with Carol and Company (it was the only combination of names that hadn't already been taken since Carol Burnett and Friends was the chopped-up rerun package running in syndication.) With this NBC series, Carol would be one of the few TV stars to headline a series on all three major networks. (She added Netflix to the roster with her kids' talk show A Little Help with Carol Burnett in 2018.) The concept for Carol and Company was different than her previous variety shows with a different 22-minute playlet each week and a recurring, rotating rep company playing different roles each time with occasional big-name guest stars. Many of these episodes are available on YouTube and to be complete about Carol's efforts, we'll include them in this series. The show began life as a midseason replacement, premiering on March 31, 1990 and running nine episodes. 

B'way Update: Leslie Odom, Jr. to Star in Purlie Victorious

Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee
in Purlie Victorious

Tony winner Leslie Odom, Jr. (Hamilton) will star in a revival of Ossie Davis' comedy Purlie Victorious, set for a Broadway run in late summer 2023. Tony winner Kenny Leon (A Raisin in the Sun, Ohio State Murders, Topdog/Underdog) will stage the play which premiered on Broadway in 1961 starring Davis and his wife and frequent collaborator Ruby Dee. Subtitled "A Non-Confederate Romp through the Cotton Patch," Purlie Victorious is a satire on stereotypical visions of a mythic Old South centering on the travelling preacher Purlie Victorious Judson who returns to his home town to save the community's church and foil the bigoted plantation owner, Ol' Cap'n Cotchipee'. A film version entitled Gone Are the Days was released in 1963 with the 1961 Broadway cast repeating their roles including Davis, Dee, Godfrey Cambridge, Beah Richards, Sorrell Booke, and Alan Alda in his film debut. A 1970 musical version, titled Purlie, ran for 668 performances and won Tonys for Cleavon Little and Melba Moore's performances.

Book Review: Assassination Vacation

Found in one of those little library boxes outside a church in our neighborhood. For free. I've been meaning to read this for a while because I love history and this looked like an interesting read. Sarah Vowell takes us on a funny, quirky road trip down American history lane. With her sister and macabre-obsessed toddler nephew, Vowell visits various locations associated with the assassinations of three presidents--Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley. Along the way, she offers views on the current state of our nation, drawing parallels between the McKinley and Bush administrations (the book was written during the Iraq war). There are also fascinating recreations of each shocking moment of violence, the bizarre coincidence that Robert Lincoln, Abe's eldest, was present for all three killings, and the state of our union during the various time periods. Enjoyable and sharp.

B'way Update: Making 'Room' and Changes to the OCC Awards

Adrienne Warren

The 2023 Broadway spring season is getting more crowded. The latest entry is Room, Emma Donoghue's stage adaptation of her best-selling novel. She also adapted the work for the 2015 film version for which Brie Larsen won a Best Actress Oscar. Tony winner Adrienne Warren (Tina: The Tina Turner Musical) will star as the young woman who is held captive with her son in a shed by a sexual predator. The play which features songs by Scottish songwriters Kathryn Joseph and Cora Bissett and direction by Ms. Bissett, will begin preview performances at the James Earl Jones Theater on April 3, prior to an April 17 opening. Room has had previous productions in London (both in England and Canada), Dublin, Glasgow, and Toronto. Additional cast members will be announced.

Whether the show will be considered a play with music or a musical has not yet been determined, since there has been reworking after the last production when it was classified as a play with music.

“I am truly honored for the opportunity to return to Broadway in a project unlike anything I’ve done before,” Adrienne Warren commented. “There were many reasons I wanted to join this team in telling this story, but most importantly, I wanted to share this beautifully human bond between a mother and her son. This is for all the little Jack’s out there determined to hold on to their sense of joy and wonder and all the Ma’s out there doing their absolute best to live, love, and protect through it all.” 

Brie Larsen and Jacob Tremblay
in the film version of Room (2015)

Reconstructing the Carol Burnett Show, Part 35: Down the Helen Reddy Wormhole

Season 10

Feb. 5, 1977: Helen Reddy

Carol with Helen Reddy

When I mentioned on blog post number 33 in this series that there was a missing musical sequence from this episode with Helen Reddy in the Best of the Carol Burnett Show DVD collection, a Twitter follower named Mamaleh Trump who bills herself as Donald's long-lost imaginary Yiddishe bubbe, posted a link to a YouTube video with the missing 12 minutes. Here's her tweet: "Episode with Helen Reddy is missing a WONDERFUL 12 minute medley where Helen & Carol sing an amazing group of songs from the 60s. Video/sound quality is not great, but it is still very much worth watching. Cost of rights to all the songs is the problem." Helen and Carol sing a prolonged medley of hits from the 1960s from Hello, Dolly to Eleanor Rigby.

And here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iO3mThPo2os&t=608s

Off-B'way Update: Days of Wine and Roses Musical

Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick in
Days of Wine and Roses

A musical version of the 1962 film Days of Wine and Roses will open Off-Broadway at the Atlantic Theater Company with previews starting May 5 and continuing till June 25. An opening date has not yet been announced. The show is a hot item because of its stars and the creative team. Tony winner Kelli O'Hara (The King and I) and Tony nominee and Drama Desk winner Brian d'Arcy James (Sweet Smell of Success, Shrek) will play the leads, a young couple battling alcoholism played by Lee Remick and Jack Lemmon in the film (Piper Laurie and Cliff Robertson starred in the original 1958 TV play.) The score is by Adam Guettel (Richard Rodgers' grandson and Mary Rodgers' son) and Craig Lucas pens the book based on JP Miller's screenplay. Michael Greif (Rent) directs. Guettel and Lucas previously collaborated on The Light in the Piazza, both winning Tonys, which starred O'Hara.

Kelli O'Hara and Brian d'Arcy James

Reconstructing the Carol Burnett Show: Part 34: Carol's 1991 Comeback

Carol with Martin Short on her
short-lived 1991 variety series

After the end of the original Carol Burnett Show, Carol made her third and final attempt at another regular series in the fall of 1991 and it did not go well. Her 1979 four-episode series Carol Burnett and Company did reasonably during its summer run on ABC. She returned to a series with Carol and Company, an anthology series featuring a different playlet each week and the repertory company of players. This was a midseason replacement on NBC which ran from March 1990 until July 1991 with a total of 33 episodes (many of which are available on Youtube. Perhaps I will do a blog on some of those some day soon.) There were occasional guest stars like Betty White, Christopher Reeve, Swoosie Kurtz (who won a Guest Actress Emmy), Robert Urich, and Carol's daughter Carrie Hamilton. When Carol and Company was cancelled, Carol went back to CBS for a revival of her variety-show, but the magic just wasn't there. She had a cast of recurring, young performers including two holdovers from the Carol and Company group--Richard Kind (now on CBS's East New York crime drama and a veteran of the NY stage, I met him at the Drama Desk Awards many times) and Megan Fay. They are joined by Chris Barnes, Roger Kabler, and Jessica Lundy. The reviews were not great. "Making Carol Burnett and Martin Short dull and monotonous is a steep, uphill climb," squawked the Los Angeles Times. "But Friday night’s premiere of “The Carol Burnett Show” on CBS somehow got there, affirming that even the funniest performers rarely overcome unfunny material. Burnett’s is the last of the 1991-92 fall series to debut. And, amazingly, one of the worst."

B'way Update: Here Lies Love and Hamlet

Jose Llana and Ruthie Ann Miles in
the Off-Broadway production of 
Here Lies Love.

The new year has barely begun, but there are already theatrical plans for summer 2023. Here Lies Love, the immersive disco musical based on the career of the infamous Imelda Marcos and the rise of the People Power Revolution of the Philippines, will make its Broadway debut and the Public Theater's Shakespeare in the Park series at the Delacorte will present yet another production of Hamlet, this time set in a post-COVID contemporary America.

Here Lies Love, featuring a sung-through score by pop icons David Byrne and Fatboy Slim, will begin previews at the Broadway Theater on June 17 and open on July 20. The theater will be reconfigured into a dance floor for the show's environmental design. The original production opened at the Public Theater in 2013 and won five Lucille Lortel Awards and three Drama Desk Awards. The show has had subsequent stagings in London and Seattle. Original director Alex Timbers (Tony winner for Moulin Rouge) returns to the production.

Broadway Update: Parade Revival with Ben Platt

Micaela Diamond and Ben Platt in
Parade which will transfer to Broadway
after its NYCC run.
Credit: Joan Marcus

Tony winner Ben Platt will return to Broadway in a revival of Parade, reprising his role from the New York City Center limited run of the musical based on the 1913 trial of Leo Frank, a Jewish factory manager who was accused of raping and murdering his employee 13-year-old Mary Phagan. Platt who won a Tony for Dear Evan Hansen will be joined by his City Center co-star Micaela Diamond (The Cher Show) who plays Frank's wife. Parade opened at Lincoln Center Theater's Vivian Beaumont Theater in 1998 and ran for 84 performances. It was nominated for nine Tonys and won for Alfred Uhry's book and Jason Robert Brown's score, and won six Drama Desk Awards including Outstanding Musical. Platt is also currently filming Richard Linklater's screen version of Merrily We Roll Along.

Parade, directed by Michael Arden (Once on This Island, Deaf West's revival of Spring Awakening) will begin previews on Feb. 21 at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater and open on March 16 for a limited run until Aug. 6. 

Lionel Barrymore Imitations in Cartoons

Lionel Barrymore in
It's a Wonderful Life

In a previous blog, I detailed my listening habits on my drive to work. One of the old-time radio shows I would listen to was the Story of Dr. Kildare with Lew Ayres and Lionel Barrymore, both recreating their roles from the film series. Barrymore was a member of the famous acting family with brother John and sister Ethel. He was confined to a wheelchair due to a broken hip and arthritis, but that did not stop him from continuing his acting career. His character Dr. Gillespie was a crochety old coot, lovable but crusty, always advising the young Dr. Kildare on difficult patients and cases. He is probably best known today for his role as Mr. Potter, the autocratic banker who attempts to dominate Jimmy Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life. Barrymore's distinctive vocal style inspired numerous imitations in animated cartoons when a curmudgeon was needed. 

Book Review: Lucy by the Sea

One of my resolutions of 2023 is to post my reviews of the books I read, no matter how short. I have been doing this on the website Goodreads.com. I did copy over some reviews occasionally in previous years, but I want to start keeping a record of my reading here on the blog. Also to record where I got the book as a journal of my connections with the book world.

Bought at Barnes and Noble for $28 with a few dollars left on a gift card from last year. I really enjoyed reading Strout's fourth novel about Lucy Barton, presumably an autobiographical figure, a novelist dealing with aging, her ex-husband, her two grown-up daughters, and the trauma of growing up within a dysfunctional, poverty-stricken household in a garage rather than a house. (Previous works are My Name Is Lucy Barton, Anything Is Possible, Oh, William. The first one was made into a solo play starring Laura Linney on Broadway.) In this version, Lucy chronicles her experiences of the COVID pandemic. Her ex-husband William, a scientist, brings her to stay in a remote house in rural Maine to avoid the mass infections in NYC. As the lockdown drags on, William and Lucy reconnect, her daughters encounter their own crises, and she makes friends with characters who also appear in Strout's Olive Kittredge novels (Pulitzer Prize, made into an HBO mini-series with Frances MacDormand). Spare, incisive prose cuts to the heart of her characters. Lucy deals with Trump supporters and the BLM movement with compassion. No one is a hero or villain, just people trying to get along.

Reconstructing the Carol Burnett Show: Part 33

Here is the first David Desk blog of 2023. I haven't done a Carol Burnett Show roundup in quite a while. Here are some bits and pieces I came across since part 32.

Season One: Feb. 5, 1968: Jack Palance, Liza Minnelli

(Originally reviewed in Reconstructing the Carol Burnett Show, Part 9, edited MeTV version includes gangster sketch; YouTube clips include Liza's two numbers, "The Ballad of Butterfly McHart" and "The Happy Time")

Carol as Trilby and Jack Palance as Svengali

Channel 21 continues to air full-hour reruns of Carol's show, but this is one of the rare ones that heretofore has not surfaced in its entirety. I discovered it several weeks ago and DVRed it. I had seen the MeTV edited versions plus YouTube clips of Carol's numbers with Liza. Previously unviewed material includes a typically lame Carol-and-Sis sketch where Carol and Roger entertain Crissy's date--a whacked-out hippie. But it turns out he's not her date, just a crazy guy looking for a hand-out, and then an even weirder guy in black leather motorcycle gear show up as Crissy's real date. Later Carol plays a saloon entertainer in the Wild West who destroys a bar with her Ethel Merman-like vocals. Then she has a solo warbling a slow version of "Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nelly."